Creating human readable dates from SBS database timestamps in Excel

Created by Will on Jun 8, 2009 1:37 PM. Last modified by Will on Jun 8, 2009 1:53 PM.

Have you ever wanted to export data from your database to Excel, but the time is in epoch time and it looks something like "1232056941623" ?

Here's the step by step for creating a new column with readable dates:

Start by importing the raw data into Excel

It will look something like this: then add a new column, like this: and then enter the following fomula: =(((<CELL>-(6*360000))/86400000)+25569) and drag it to the rest of the cells! The explaination for this formula can be found here: http://www.blindhog.net/convert-epoch-time-in-excel/ . Though it is slightly different as we are tracking milliseconds, not just seconds.

You'll then end up with a bunch of decimals, like: and you then need to format that column. Do that by selecting the column -> format cells, and then choose:

which will produce the final result: and you're good to go.

Hope this helps out! If not, it'll be a good resource for me in the future